Blaze Reign
The leader and founder of the Metal Bitches, Blaze Reign managed to turn a small group of disaffected raiders into one of the most powerful forces in the Detroit Wastelands. She presents a complex dichotomy; cruel, merciless and often sadistic on one hand, but also genuinely caring and attempting to build a genuine better future on the other. History Blaze was born in a small farming and scavenging community in the northern Michigan Wastelands in 2260. Her early life was a harsh one; her community only barely scraped by, surviving on what they could find in the face of harsh winters, hostile wildlife and the threat of Raiders. From early on she was working for a living, doing what she could to gather supplies and keep herself and her community alive. Her early life was complicated by her relationship with her father. Once a skilled hunter, he had suffered injuries that had left him largely confined to farming and other roles within the community. He saw this as a failure on his part, which in turn drove him to heavy drinking. A mean-spirited and violet drunk, he would often take out his aggressions on Blaze, whom he saw as being a failure simply because they were not the son he wanted. While many within the village knew of his behaviour, few were willing to do anything about it due to his violent tendencies. When Blaze entered puberty, she found that she was strong enough to fight back against her father. Unfortunately, this served to only enrage him further. Eventually, she simply chose another way out. Stealing her father’s stash of caps, his rifle and some supplies, she left home. While travelling alone in the wastelands was a risk, she felt that was better than living with her father and a community that had enabled him. Her own training as a hunter gave her a degree of survival skills that allowed her to live off the land for some time as she continued to travel. At first she had no real destination in mind, but as she continued to wander, she found herself drawn towards the Detroit Wasteland. The largest population concentration in the region, the ruined city seemed to offer her more than the rural wilderness ever could. At first she picked her way through the ruined and abandoned outer suburbs of the city, finding little there beyond lurking creatures and the occasional Feral Ghoul. During this time, Blaze scavenged for what she needed to survive, while also taking whatever she found that might have been of any value. While she knew little of the ruined city, her hope was that she would find her way to one of the ‘civilised’ settlements where she would be able to trade what she had for caps and a home. Fate had other plans in store for her. Blaze was jumped by a group of raiders calling themselves the Red Snakes. While they had planned to rob her, she instead asked to join them. At first her response was met with laugher, but her insistence (and keeping a gun levelled at them) made it clear that she was not joking. Confident of his own skill, one of them stepped forward and made her an offer; if she could beat him in a fight, Blaze could join the gang. Her acceptance was met with a round of laugher, however, that derision was soon extinguished as she laid into the man. Soon he was lying bloody on the street, and the Red Snakes had their newest member. Blaze took to the raider life with ease, as if she had been born for it. The truth was that she was simply using all the aggression and anger she had been sitting on for years, letting it out and using it to drive her actions. Despite her relative youth and outsider status, she had risen quickly through their ranks. By 2280, she was one of the gang’s lieutenants. She also had found her first lover in Jackson Burwood, another member of the gang. In early 2280, the Red Snakes were attacked by the Twisted Cross, a powerful gang who were seeking to harvest their members for sale to their slaver allies. The attack went well, with a number of the Red Snakes, Jackson included, falling quickly. However, the attack also faced unexpected opposition from Blaze who managed to hold out against their advance far longer than any of her comrades. Using her wits and meagre resources, she managed to kill several of the Twisted Cross raiders, and wound a few more before she was finally captured. Rather than take her as a slave, the leader of the Twisted Cross group chose to teach her a lesson about defiance, while also hoping to send a message to anyone else who would dare to oppose them. Blaze was savagely beaten and left half dead by the raiders, who figured that they had gotten their point over. Left alone in the now former headquarters of the Red Snakes, Blaze managed to pull herself together using what few supplies (and chems) were left. However, if they thought she was cowed, then the Twisted Cross proved to be sadly mistaken. Instead, Blaze swore vengeance on the gang, seeking to bring it down by whatever means she could. Desire for vengeance aside, Blaze was still a realist. She knew that she could not take down the Twisted Cross on her own. So instead she tried to find supporters and allies who had not yet been cowed by the Twisted Cross and also sought their end. Her first recruit came about through happenstance. She stumbled onto a Twisted Cross group who were in the process of attacking a scavenger party. Having killed all bar one of its members, the group were enjoying tormenting the sole survivor for their own twisted pleasure. Blaze used the distraction to eliminate them, before aiding the survivor. Having just been assaulted by the Twisted Cross, as well as just losing her husband to them, Sheena Crew was more than willing to aid Blaze in her goals. The third member of their team was not a direct victim of the Twisted Cross, but had been affected by them no less. Reign and Crew discovered that the slavers were searching for a particular woman with intent to capture her. After interrogating a couple of Twisted Cross raiders, they discovered why. The woman, Rose Thorne, was technically literate and capable, which the Cross felt would make her a highly lucrative prize for sale. Seeing an opportunity, the pair of them managed to track Thorne down to her lair inside an old service tunnel. After convincing her that they were not from the Twisted Cross (the fact that they were both women went a long way towards proving their case) the pair of them made their case for their cause of bringing the slaver gang down. Thorne readily joined them, knowing that she would never be safe until the gang was eliminated, while also eager for no small measure of vengeance against them. Having secured her core of supporters, Reign now had to build an army. To this end, she moved among the small communities and raider gangs of the eastern Detroit Wasteland, looking for angry women who had been disempowered or disenfranchised by their circumstances. While she specifically sought out those who had been victims of the Twisted Cross, she was not going to turn down anyone who was willing to join up. Those that had actual fighting experience were placed in charge of helping to train those that did not, raising the group to at least a passable level of competence. Reign bloodied her recruits by sending them on small raids against the Twisted Cross and their operations. These attacks served two purposes; the first was to give her troops much-needed experience while assessing their capabilities. The second was to try and gather intelligence about the Cross, while looking for any weaknesses or vulnerabilities that they could exploit. While there were losses, these operations proved to be remarkably successful. The Twisted Cross, having grown complacent in their arrogance, failed to recognise these attacks for what they were. Their leader, Edward Guse, put them down to the day to day risks of living in the wasteland, having failed to realise that the raids were a coordinated effort by a single group. Instead, his focus was on his allies in the Gentlemen, who had suffered a series of setbacks that had diminished their influence and whittled down their holdings and numbers. His concern was that should the Gentlemen collapse then his own gang might be weakened or end up in the firing line of their enemies. Blaze’s greatest intelligence coup came with the discovery of Bob Bragg. One of Guse’s lieutenants, Bragg was in charge of meeting with external buyers to trade. However, Bragg had become frustrated with his place inside the gang. He yearned for greater power, but knew that as long as Guse was in charge, he would always be stuck in second place. Furthermore, Guse was too well protected for Bragg to make any overt moves against him. Using this information, Blaze seduced Bragg and convinced him to form an alliance with her. She promised him that she would help him bring down Guse and put him in charge of the Twisted Cross, giving him all that he wanted. At the same time, she pried information out of him on their operations, membership, allies and, most importantly, their lair in the Detroit House of Correction. In short order she had Bragg wrapped around his finger, plying him with chems, alcohol and empty promises of power. Starting in 2281, Blaze stepped up the tempo and intensity of her attacks. Now her moves were more overt and aggressive, openly targeting the Twisted Cross and their operations. Her goals were twofold; the first was to disrupt their operations and prevent their functioning normally, while the second was to bleed them of manpower. Soon the Twisted Cross were suffering considerable losses on all fronts, and were starved of income. Realising just how severe the problem was, Guse desperately searched for a solution, but all his efforts came up empty as a result of Bragg’s efforts at misdirection. Confident that she had Bragg’s support, Blaze made her next move. On the night of the 23rd of May, 2281, she, Crew, Thorn and a small group of raiders her infiltrated the prison, using information Bragg had provided them. Once inside, they moved to eliminate the guards before breaking into the slave quarters. Freeing the slaves and arming them with the weapons they had taken, Blaze and her loyalists started an open revolt against the Twisted Cross. With Bragg’s help, they moved quickly, eliminating the remaining loyalists and gutting the gang. Caught unware, Guse was wounded in the battle and captured by the raiders. He was bought before Blaze and her lieutenants, with Bragg among them. Blaze then explained to him that it had been Bragg who had betrayed him, selling out the Twisted Cross in exchange for his own personal advancement. Seeing the reaction from Guse, Blaze then gave Bragg his ‘reward’ for his efforts by shooting him in the head, killing him on the spot. Then, to prove a point, she desecrated his collection of Confederate memorabilia and burned it, before finally making Guse beg for his life. Blaze then had him hung from the front of the prison, where his body would remain for the next month. The Twisted Cross were no more, and in their place a new power had risen. Gathering her men, as well as the freed slaves, Blaze declared that they were now the Metal Bitches. And while they were raiders, they were not slavers by any means. Her first act was to free all the slaves who had supported them, while giving the women the option to join their ranks. Many of them chose to do such, swelling the gang’s ranks. Having established her new order, Blaze now needed to ensure its survival. Consolidating her forces inside the prison, she did what she could to reinforce it while building up her own strength. While the Metal Bitches would need to deal with the hazards of trying to survive in the wasteland, she also knew that her actions would not go unnoticed by any means, and that they could expect retaliation. Blaze’s predictions were correct. Learning of the demise of their allies, the Gentlemen chose to retaliate in order to make up for their losses while also sending a message about what would happen to those that crossed them. Their plan was blunt and unsophisticated, aimed at crushing the Metal Bitches straight out. Internally, the Gentlemen were dismissive of their enemies, a move born of both their long-held sense of superiority and the perception that a gang made up entirely of women would be weak. Expecting a triumph, what the Gentlemen got was instead an utter disaster. Their troops were harassed as they advanced, the victims of near constant hit and fade attacks that whittled down their numbers while sapping their morale. On reaching the prison itself, they found that the Metal Bitches had reinforced the structure and had taken up positions on its walls and towers. Facing overwhelming opposition, the Gentlemen were forced to retreat, but not before a number of their men were captured or killed. While they had triumphed over their enemies, the Metal Bitches also needed to survive. Once she felt they were decently established, Blaze began putting her forces to work as Raiders. However, her plan was not to be as indiscriminate, violent or wanton as her predecessors had been. Rather, she sought to create a model of what she called ‘sustainable’ Raiding, one that would ensure the Metal Bitches’ long-term survival. Instead, her plan was twofold. The first part of it was to thin out or eliminate the competition by taking care of the other Raider gangs remaining in the region. While avoiding conflict with larger or well-organised gangs, Blaze instead targeted those smaller groups that were more abundant in this part of the Wasteland. Furthermore, she discouraged violence and cruelty for the sake of it, instead urging her people to take as many prisoners as they could. Those prisoners would be divided up, depending on their gender. Female prisoners were given the option of joining the Metal Bitches. Those that refused would be allowed to go, although it would be made clear that it would be best to stay out of the gang’s way. Male prisoners would be fed into the Bitches’ deathmatches for their entertainment; those that survived would then be kept as ‘servants’ for the rest of the gang. However, aside from recruits, Blaze was well aware that the rewards from preying on raiders would be slim at best. Her gang’s main source of supply would come from the traditional Raider targets; settlements, traders, scavengers and so on. However, her plan was not to engage in the same level of destructive, bloody action that was typical of raider attacks. Rather, her gang would take only what it needed to survive (even if comfortably), and if possible, use intimidation and standover tactics to get what they wanted. Her plan was to keep those communities alive and able to keep feeding them, rather than driving them into the ground. For the first three years of their existence, this plan worked for the Metal Bitches. Their raids netted them the supplies they needed without the need to destroy their targets or engage in violence for the simple sake of it. Rather, the gang’s bloodlust was sated through attacks on other Raider gangs, as well as their deathmatches. The gang quietly consolidated its power, although Blaze was careful to make sure that she and her gang remained alert and active, rather than fall into the same complacency that bought down the Twisted Cross and crippled the Gentlemen. For all Blaze’s planning, however, it was an external event that would do the most to consolidate the Metal Bitches’ power. April 2284 bought news that the long-dormant Army of Revolution was on the warpath, driving into the Detroit Wasteland with a massively expanded force. Reports on both Radio Free Detroit and Motown Pirate Radio conformed that two of the settlements in the Detroit Wasteland, Baggie High and Scrap Iron City, had allready fallen to the Revolutionaries, and that their forces were continuing to advance. Seeing an opportunity, Blaze played this crisis for all it was worth. She turned to those communities that she was standing over, pointing out that as bad as the Metal Bitches might be, rule by the Army of Revolution would be worse. After all, she reasoned, the Metal Bitches like things to stay the way they are, while the Army of Revolution would likely take whatever they wanted and kill anyone who got in their way. Their only hope was to essentially let the Metal Bitches protect them by cooperating with the Raiders. As she expected, her demands met some opposition, but eventually the settlements all fell into line rather than risk conquest. The truth was that Blaze suspected the Army of Revolution had very little interest in the Eastern half of the city. Instead, she figured they would likely set their sights on the central and western portions, which contained the largest and wealthiest settlements. However, she was careful not to reveal this information, instead continuing to use the fear of the Army of Revolution as a way to enforce her will. Ultimately, the Army of Revolution never made its way to the Metal Bitches’ territories, exactly as she had expected. However, following the end of the so-called Revolutionary war and the collapse of their forces, some deserters (both individual and in groups) made their way into the Metal Bitches’ territories. The gang preyed upon them as they would other Raiders, capturing them and either offering them membership or feeding them to their arena depending on their gender. One of those captives, Shane Marten, caught her eye. Handsome and well-kept for a raider, she found him to be quite attractive. She arranged for him to be bought to her as her personal ‘entertainer’. While at first their relationship was decidedly one-sided, the pair of them came to develop a mutual affection for each other, eventually becoming lovers. The curious result of this arrangement was that the Metal Bitches began to evolve away from being a raider gang and into something that vaguely resembled a feudal society. They would collect tribute from their vassal settlements, and in return provide them with protection from those that would prey on them. Those that stepped out of line would be dealt with, and used as an example of what happened to those that chose to defy their authority. While the situation remained stable for two years, the dawn of 2287 threatened to change everything. The growing fighting between the city’s three slaver gangs (the Furies, the War Bears and the Gentlemen) threatened to spill over, forcing Blaze to divert more of her crew to watching her territory and protecting against incursions. While she was happy to let the three potentially destroy each other, she did not want them to do such at the expense of her own holdings. The real eye-opener came when the Metal Bitches were approached by the Army of Revolution with regards to a potential alliance. Blaze flat out rejected the offer, making it clear that her gang would not be anyone’s slaves. Figuring that this was a prelude to some greater action, she again began preparing her forces for what she saw as being an inevitable conflict. At the same time, she beefed up protection of their vassal states, determined that nobody would take what she saw as hers. Her predictions proved to be correct, although Blaze had not expected just how far they would reach. The fall of Park Lane took her by surprise, as she had not expected the Army to move so fast and reach so far. All of a sudden, the threat of an attack seemed very real, resulting in the Metal Bitches readying themselves for the worst case scenario; a direct invasion of their territory by the Army of Revolution. Personality Blaze is something of a contradictory character. Despite being a self-declared raider, she actually holds her followers in high regard. She created the Metal Bitches not just as an instrument of vengeance, but also to help protect other women from the predations of other raiders and slavers. As such, she treats their members with respect and no small degree of actual support, rather then the usual rule through brutality that is so common to other raiders. However, she also is not soft on them by any means; she does not tolerate dissent, and those who challenge her or break her rules often find themselves suffering her wrath. For all this, she is still a raider, and takes what she wants. At the same time, Blaze is careful to restrain the gang from unneeded and wanton violence and brutality for the sake of it. She will not hurt a non-combatant unless they deliberately put themselves in the line of fire, and treats the female victims of her attacks with a degree of respect. At the same time, she tries to ensure that their targets do not suffer excessively from her actions. The Metal Bitches take what they need rather than bleeding their targets dry. This does not stop her from exercising her more aggressive and violent side, especially against other raiders. She enjoys watching those men they have captured fight in the gang’s arena, and seems to relish the bloodshed that ensues from the spectacle. At her most vengeful she becomes cruel to the point of sadistic. Her worst excesses came when she captured Edward Guse, the leader of the Twisted Cross. Blaze beat him, humiliated him and then sexually assaulted him before she finally killed him. The oddest chink in her armor is her relationship with Shane Marten, her present lover. While their relationship was initially decidedly one-sided, the pair found that that their relationship evolved into something deeper and more affectionate. The pair of them are genuinely loving towards each other, even if privately so. Appearance Outwardly, Blaze is a rough-looking woman; far from traditionally attractive, she is rugged and hard-worn as a result of years of living in the wasteland and operating as a raider. Her features are rough, but still attractive in their own way even if covered under grime. She has scruffy light brown hair that is worn shoulder-length, but usually ends up in a straw-like mess. Her eyes are sharp, giving her a steely glare that underlines her drive and determination. In order to play up her image, Blaze will usually sport facepaint or other accessories to make her seem even more wild and fierce. Despite this outward presentation, Blaze is actually a man from a purely biological perspective. While she was born male, she identified as a woman from an early age, something that only served to fuel her father’s rage and hatred towards her. Unfortunately, due to the lack of medical care in the wastelands, especially for such matters, Blaze is likely to remain ‘male’ for some time to come. Few within the Metal Bitches know about this, and those that do have vowed to remain silent on the matter. Equipment Blaze’s typical attire serves to underscore her role as a raider. She usually wears a set of road leathers, a rather typical choice for the role. On top of that, she sports a set of leather armor, accessorised with studs both to help protect her and also add to her countenance. Her preferred weapon is a Foundry-built Assault Rife, although she has used other weapons as needed. She also usually will carry a number of knives on her. Despite being the leader of the Metal Bitches, Blaze doesn’t usually wear their Power Armor suit in the field. Instead, it is usually worn by Rose, who serves as the muscle to back up Blaze’s verbal intimidation. Category:Raiders